Deep Down True (48 page)

The sight of him shivering against the cold in the frost-speckled parking lot just to be with her brought on a wave of guilt. She couldn’t stand what she was doing to him, but she didn’t know how to stop. She put her arms around him and hugged him, and his arms circled her waist, pulling her in, but not too tight. He was controlling himself.

“I’m not sure,” she whispered. “I don’t know yet.”

“Okay,” he murmured, kissing her cheek. “You know where to find me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No,” he insisted, though she could feel the pain that seemed to radiate out from his body and into hers. “Don’t be.” And he let her go and went back inside.

S
ATURDAY WAS WARM BY DECEMBER IN NEW England standards, the high predicted to be a near-tropical fifty degrees. Dana awoke with a need to move, motion seeming like the only thing that might quiet her worry for Morgan and her indecision about Tony. And Kenneth’s marriage to his ever-expanding girlfriend was one week away.

I have to get out of here,
she thought.

But an idea occurred to her as she passed Morgan’s room and saw her curled over her notebooks at eight in the morning, then went down to the basement and found Grady in front of the TV, his body strewn across the couch as if he’d been flung there by his ankle, a prisoner to the flashing lights and whining cartoon voices before him.

She went to the TV room, where Alder lay wrapped around a pillow on her side of the pullout couch. Jet was facedown, drooling, a leg dangling off the far side. “Girls,” Dana whispered.

“Buh,” breathed Alder.

“Girls,”
Dana insisted.

“Fuck off,” muttered Jet, still half asleep.

“This is my house!” said Dana. “Do
not
tell me to fuck off!”

Both girls jumped. Jet rolled off the bed and crawled around the end toward Dana. “Sorrysorrysorry,” she muttered. When she reached Dana, she hugged her knee. “Seriouslysorry.”

“Okay,” said Dana, patting Jet’s head. “Now, let me ask you two something.” Jet released her and climbed back onto the pullout. “Where is there a nice little mountain with a good view?”

And so, after putting her foot down with Morgan that while hiking might not be her first choice of activities, she would give it a try nonetheless, and after attending a tutorial by Jet and Alder about the proper layering of clothing, and after convincing Grady that water shoes were not appropriate footwear despite their “totally killer grip” ... Dana finally had them all in the car and on their way to Talcott Mountain State Park.

At first Morgan hiked as if she had a cinder block tied to each foot. Grady tended to sprint ahead, then stop for extended periods to climb on a fallen log or check out what he invariably thought were bear caves but were actually just piles of rocks.

“Shit,” Dana overheard Jet mutter to Alder. “It’s like hiking with Eeyore and Tigger.”

“Shut up,” murmured Alder. “You used to think Under Armour was a video game.”

About halfway up, however, Morgan apparently decided she might as well make the best of it, and Grady settled in to hiking with the group. By the time they got to Heublein Tower, a beautiful old house built on the mountain, Jet was racing Grady to the top, and Morgan was chatting with Alder about what art classes she might take in high school. At the summit they ate their squished sandwiches, bruised fruit, and broken cookies, and no one complained.

 

 

“What was the best part of today?” Dana asked Morgan at bedtime.

“Going to that ice-cream place on the way home.” They had stopped at Friendly’s in Avon for a bathroom break and ended up all jammed into a booth, ordering cones.

“Ohhh,”
said Dana tugging a lock of Morgan’s hair. “ The ice cream ...”

“No, I liked the stories you told about Grandma. I never knew she was a waitress.”

“Yeah, it’s funny the things you might not know about people, even though you’re related.”

Morgan gazed at Dana as if she were speculating on the secrets she might uncover about her own mother one day.

“Hey,” said Dana. “Remember when you told me that thing about Bubble Wrap? How all the hard things that happen and the mean things that people do pop our bubbles?” Dana stroked the wheat-colored hair, fanning it out around the pillow. “I’ve been thinking about that. You’re right. That’s just how it feels. Like you’re deflating.”

Morgan nodded almost imperceptibly.

“But then,” said Dana, “I was thinking ... it’s just wrap. It’s on the outside. And it’s really awful when it gets popped, but at least it’s not the only thing you’re made of.”

“Feels like it,” Morgan murmured.

“Yeah, but it’s not. I mean, it’s part of you, but it’s not the deep down true part.” She watched Morgan’s eyes, the pupils spreading wider into the flecked brown irises as she pondered this possibility. “Also,” Dana continued, “the popping—it’s temporary. The bubbles reinflate.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve felt it. Maybe somebody helps you out, or laughs at your joke, or just gives you a look like they’re on your side ...”

“But then you have to wait around for someone to feel like being nice to you,” said Morgan bitterly. “Some days
nothing
good happens.”

“Unless you make it happen.”

“Like how?”

“Like doing something nice for someone else.” Dana hesitated, not sure if she should keep going in the direction she intended.
You’re afraid to state the obvious,
she told herself, and forged ahead. “As you know, it’s been kind of a tough year for me. The divorce, going back to work, not being home as much. But when I take a meal over to that family with the sick dad or I solve some problem at work”—she gave a sly smile—“or I make you try something new, and you like it even though you won’t admit it ... I feel good. And no one can pop those bubbles. They’re permanent.”

Morgan looked doubtful.

“Trust me,” whispered Dana, leaning down to kiss Morgan’s forehead. “I’m forty-five years old. I know a few things.”

 

 

On Monday morning the kids went off to school, and for the first time in a month and a half Dana stayed home.
It should be a relief!
she told herself. But it wasn’t, and not just because of the money. She missed it. She’d been good at it. And she wondered how Tony was.

By the time the kids got home, she had scoured the house, reorganized all the kitchen drawers, made a batch of chili for the McPhersons, and baked three loaves of zucchini bread. She took Grady to basketball, and it wasn’t until Ben Fortin was hiking up the bleachers toward her that she remembered his phone message. She’d returned his call, not wanting to be rude, and knowing she’d have to face him again at basketball anyway. But the message she’d left was so brief it couldn’t be construed as anything remotely like interest.

He sat down next to her. “Hope you don’t think I’m some stray dog you can’t get rid of now because you took a thorn out of my paw.”

“Not at all,” she said. It was exactly what she was thinking.

“You’re a friendly face for a poor dad in a sea of mommitude.” He grinned. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you, by the way. Work’s been so crazy, and the week got away from me. I was hoping to make my case before someone else snapped you up.”

Good Lord,
thought Dana,
here it comes.

“You haven’t found a new position, have you?” Ben asked.

New POSITION?
What in the world was he talking about?

Confusion must have shown on her face, because he added, “Last week you said you were about to be laid off ...”

“Oh! Yes, I was—am! Today was my first day off, in fact, and I thought it would be a relief, but I kind of missed it.”

“So you’re interested in finding something again? Because I was talking with my partner, and we think it’s time to get some help. Business is going well, but we both hate to answer the phone—got into a real tiff about it a couple of days ago ... Anyway, it’s a renewable-energy company, very start-up. The job is office-manager stuff. Ordering supplies, keeping track of things, dealing with clients when we’re out. We aren’t ready to take on someone full-time yet—maybe twenty, twenty-five hours a week.” He looked doubtful. “That’s not enough, is it?”

“Actually,” Dana said, “that’s plenty.”

 

 

She was feeling hopeful as she drove to the McPhersons’ a few hours later with the chili dinner tucked snugly in a shopping bag in the backseat. Ben had called his partner right there from the bleachers to set up a formal interview for Wednesday. There was a teasing affection in his voice that seemed to go beyond the bounds of business partnership or male friendship. Dana wondered if that had been the reason for his divorce.

As she drove, the sky was blue-black and the streetlights were already lit at five-thirty. The feel of Tony’s arms around her waist and his lips on her cheek came to her again, as it had all weekend. Despite the uncertainty between them, it had felt so ... good.

Maybe too good.
Unlike the kiss on the rooftop, which had made her feel scared and disoriented, their embrace in the parking lot—the tenderness with which he’d adjusted her scarf and kissed her cheek—had felt utterly natural. It lacked the push and pull, the unspoken negotiation she was used to with Kenneth and other men. Had the embrace been brotherly? She tested this possibility in her mind, but it didn’t fit. Familiar, maybe, but not familial.

When Dana pulled up in front of the McPhersons’ house, there were two extra cars in the driveway. She wondered if the visitors were staying for dinner. She’d made extra, as usual, but it could be stretched only so far. A stranger answered the door.

“I’m Dana Stellgarten. I’m here with dinner.”

The woman squinted at Dana as if she didn’t understand English.

“Comfort Food?” Dana said. “Is Mary Ellen or Dermott here?”

“Oh, God,” the woman murmured. She glanced behind her, opened the door a little wider, and reached for the shopping bag. “Here, just give it to me.”

“Who’s that?” came a voice.

“Just a delivery person,” the woman called back.

“Wait!” Mary Ellen appeared in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed, tendrils of hair loose from her ponytail. “Dana!” she said. “I knew it was you,” and she began to cry. Dana stepped toward her, and she reached for Dana, clutching at her and sobbing in seizurelike spasms. Dana looked to the woman behind them and made eye contact, silently begging for an explanation. The woman mouthed,
Dermott died today.

They stood in the doorway with their arms wrapped around each other, crying for what could have been moments or hours. Dana felt as if her insides had turned liquid, and every concern she had, every wish for herself and her life, had gone seeping out through the bottom of her feet, pressed as she was in the frantic embrace of a newborn widow.

It had happened just an hour or so before. He had lain down for a nap earlier in the afternoon and died in his sleep. Mary Ellen went in to check on him and was able to scoot the kids over to a neighbor’s house before they figured it out. Minutes later the paramedics arrived.

“I told the dispatcher, ‘For godsake, don’t put the siren or lights on—it’s the only chance I have that they won’t notice,’” she told Dana later when they were sitting at the Magic Marker-stained kitchen table. Two other women were there, friends she’d called who lived nearby. One had Mary Ellen’s address book and was making phone calls; the other was tidying up the house in preparation for the tides of friends and relatives who would arrive shortly to cry and comfort her and cry some more.

“I just wish I’d been with him,” Mary Ellen said to Dana, her voice hoarse with emotion. “I could have lain down, too. I was tired. Why didn’t I lie down with him? Maybe he would’ve said something. But I just didn’t think ... I really believed he would make it!”

“You couldn’t have known,” Dana soothed. “And what could he have said that you don’t already know? That he loves you? That you’re a good wife? You know these things.”

Mary Ellen’s chin trembled. “When we went out on that date last week, he said it all ...” Tears began to spill down her cheeks. “Do you think he knows I’m sorry I wasn’t with him?”

“I think,” said Dana, biting the inside of her lip to keep from crying again, “I think he knows you would’ve done anything for him. Because you
did
everything—everything you could do. I need to tell you something now, before a million people show up. Something he asked me to tell you.” Her throat clenched, and it was hard to get the words out. “He wanted you to know he’s missing you. Right now. Just as you’re missing him, wherever he is, he’s missing you, too.”

Mary Ellen laid her head down on the table and sobbed. Dana rubbed her back, brushed her hair off her cheek as she would have done for Morgan or Alder or Connie. As she would’ve done for anyone who was so sad she couldn’t hold her head up anymore.

When Mary Ellen quieted a little, Dana put her own head down on the table to talk to her. “One more thing,” she whispered. “He said I should keep cooking for you.”

A sound burst out of Mary Ellen then, and it took Dana a second to recognize it as a laugh. “Demanding son of a gun, isn’t he?” she said, a smile breaking across the tearstained cheeks.

“I would have done it anyway,” Dana confided. “He just gave me an excuse.”

 

 

Relatives and close friends started arriving. Dana let herself out and walked to her car. She sat there in the front seat, mind awash with Mary Ellen’s sorrow and the image of Dermott’s face as he had gazed at his wife only a week before, when Dana had brought over the silk blouse. As sick and diminished as he was, he looked as if he felt lucky.

I am such an idiot,
thought Dana. She called home and told Alder what had happened. “I’m going to go see a friend,” she said. “Can you hold down the fort?”